


Whumptober 2019

by KuroKittyPurr, SinnerForAsrian (KuroKittyPurr)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-26 19:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 6,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20935256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KuroKittyPurr/pseuds/KuroKittyPurr, https://archiveofourown.org/users/KuroKittyPurr/pseuds/SinnerForAsrian
Summary: Just a place to archive all my Whumptober 2019 works





	1. Shaky Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The MC has been hospitalized due to severe anorexia.

Other tags: starvation, anorexia

It wasn’t… right. The sight of her skeletal hands. The sight of her translucent skin. Dark veins underneath, the lazy blood barely moving. She raised her hand in the moonlight, and it pierced her hand as sunlight might pierce a healthy hand, exposing her bones.

She remembered through a haze a quote that had hunted her childhood. “I was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning I break my legs, and every afternoon I break my arms. At night, I lay awake in agony until my hart attacks put me to sleep.” Was that what had become of her? A little more than a ghost, a sack of bones and pain?

The linen dress was soft against her dry skin, so dry it felt like breaking. She looked down, taking in her frail shape, bones nearly cutting the skin open at every move. She looked down at her hands and saw them shaking. Why were they shaking? She tried to stop them, but she couldn’t. The shaking just got worse and worse the more she struggled.

She laid down and looked at the moon. The mattress barely changed its shape to accommodate her body. Her skin looked grayish in comparison with the pure white of the bed sheets. She pulled her legs closer to her body and put the covers on, trying to keep whatever warmth her body still held.

She felt so, so old. She closed her eyes and thought about how everything had started, the words that hurt her and the people who always threw her __those __glances__. __She thought about cutting the sugar and then cutting the carbs, then cutting the fats and finally cutting the meat out of her diet, each day eating less and less. She remembered the teas she took in order to get rid of everything faster, and the appreciative looks the other people started giving her.

But it had been too late for her then. She could no longer glance at food without feeling nauseous, yet her every dream was filled with the tastes she couldn’t stand to think about.

Suddenly, she couldn’t understand how it had happened anymore. Her chest felt too tight, her body was cold. When she wrapped her arms around her body, all she could feel were sharp edges. She looked at her hands again, still shaky, then she looked at the canvas in the corner and at the clock. It was late night, or maybe early morning. The nurse was supposed to come in a few hours with her perfusion. She wondered when was the last time she had eaten something herself, not just the liquids they were pumping into her body. A needle was stuck in her left arm, held in place with plasters. That had been her mouth for days now, but suddenly, she craved feeling tastes again. She wanted it to be morning already, so she could ask the nurse for tea.

Her glare fell on the canvas again. She remembered, as if through a cloud, a chubbier girl maneuvering brushes with a confidence she never had when she was with others. Where had she lost this girl? Could she bring her back?

She could at least try to. Careful, doing her best to not hit her limbs, she got up and prepared her paint. Her body knew what she needed to do better than her mind could remember. It didn’t matter that her hands were not sure as they used to be, or that she nearly spilled the oil when she tried to pour it. There was nothing besides the canvas, the brushes, the paint and the moon.

The silver globe seemed to smile through the window as she smeared paint over the canvas. Her hands were still shaking, her whole body was shaking from the effort of standing straight. Her heartbeat changed its rate, but she didn’t notice.

Wood hit the hardwood floor. Then, another muffled sound, and silence.

There was still silence when the nurse came in.

A drawing of unfinished cupcakes and flowers was all that was left to tell the world that she had wanted to get better, but it had been too late.


	2. Explosion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The characters live in a world dominated by diesel punk, atom punk and tesla punk ideas. They both work at a factory when an accident takes place.

Bright. Brighter. Brighter. Too bright.

The blast of the explosion threw them far back, right on top of a pile of trash. The brutal landing made their bones crack audibly. Iron bars and concrete pieces kept flying around, pushed by the sudden push of the explosion, but they couldn’t see any of them. Through a miracle, the fall had activated the magnetic field around them and no lose shrapnel pierced their skin as they curled up in the middle of the trash pile, hands covering their head.

When the explosion ended and everything seemed calm, they scanned their body with their mind. Sore, but not broken. They became aware of the ringing in their ears and the sharp pain behind their eyes. They squeezed them shut and rubbed them with the back of their wrists, then opened them. At first the world was blurry - the light had been too strong, some of their light receptors must have burnt. For a passing second they wondered if they were going to go blind, but then their vision started to stabilize. They felt a tingle on the side of their neck - on a closer inspection, they realized it was blood, dripping from their ears. “Well, that explains the ringing,” they muttered to themself before looking around.

Their eyes widened in horror as they took in their surroundings. The reactor was in pieces. There were leaking pipes in the ceiling, and all the gear looked good for recycling. Their gaze focused on the reactor again. The… reactor…

“NO!” they screamed, the fact that the reactor had blown up finally fully hitting them. They broke into a run, the old anti-gravitational boots allowing them to jump over the rubble. “Where is she where is she where is she where is she”, their mind seemed to sing as their eyes scanned frantically for a sign. “Be alive be alive be alive be alive be alive”, the chant changed the more they searched.

This was why they hadn’t wanted to accept the job at the diesel factory, but she had insisted. They needed money, that was true, and diesel factories paid well. The industry was dying, there were no more engineers, everyone moving towards the newer and safer atom and tesla plants. But even those needed fuel to function, and diesel was still the cheapest mass production fuel they had. It wasn’t the safest or the greenest, but the owners didn’t care and the workers needed money. And there was a lot of money if you had the knowledge and were willing to put yourself in dangerous positions.

She was smart and brave, but sometimes not so wise. She had become a reactor technician, taking the most dangerous job. Her overconfidence might have just gotten her killed, and they couldn’t stand it. They had taken the technical inspector job to take care of her, but it might not have been enough. “Dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead”, their mind sang.

Or, was that…?

There.

A gloved hand, stained with motor oil, a silver ring shining on the ring finger.

In two steps they were there, savagely throwing bits of concrete to the side as they dug and dug. First the arm, then the chest and head. “Oh, thank God, the head is okay. Hold on Min’ya, you hear me? Hold on,” they muttered, tears choking their voice.

They kept digging until her whole body was free. Others had started moving, searching for other survivors. In the distance, sirens.

They cradled Min’ya’s head in their arms and sobbed. “Oh God, please let her be alive, please let her be alive, “ they muttered as they searched for her pulse, too weak for their fingertips to feel. Despair filled their every cell. “Min’ya? Min’ya! Please, baby, please wake up. I can’t go on without you. Please, wake up. Wake up!” Sobs chocked their voice up as they just held their fiance’s head and cried, defeated.

A white gloved hand pulled them out of their trance. “Let’s take her to the hospital,” the medic said, his voice warm and reassuring. Still in a haze, they lifted Min’ya in their arms and followed the doctor to the ambulance. Inside there were two more of their coworkers.

“Hey, Jo. You took that better than the rest of us, heh?” one of them said, weighting them with his eyes.

They just pursed their mouth and laid Min’ya down on the bed. The ride to the hospital felt like purgatory, the doctors checking that everyone was stable as they rode.

At the hospital, the nurses clenched their teeth at the sight of them, bloody and dirty from the dust and grease in the factory. Their clothes were off in no time and doctors were fussing around them, checking for wounds or concussions. Jo’s eardrums were perforated and a rib was cracked, but that was about it. Min’ya had a concussion and so many bruises that the doctors were worried she was bleeding internally, but she wasn’t. One of her arms had severe burns which needed grafts, and she had lost blood.

They spent the night in the hospital. Min’ya didn’t wake up.

Jo was discharged the next day, together with a bottle of antibiotics for their ears.

Min’ya still didn’t wake up.

The doctors checked everything - all her organs were functioning, her brain impulses seemed fine. They couldn’t understand why she wasn’t waking up. Jo grew grimmer every day.

They made the owner of the plant pay their salaries for the month and compensation for the accident. They threatened to reveal exactly what was going wrong in the plant - as an inspector, they knew everything too well.

After a week of waiting, they digged through Min’ya’s health papers. Nothing seemed to explain why she wasn’t waking up. They read everything again. As they were putting the documents back, an idea formed in their head.

Fueled by the last of their hopes, they searched on the internet for information about the device Min’ya had implanted at the base of her spine to help with her back and period pains. Their eyes were frantic as they read and read, until they found what they needed. They rushed to the hospital and nearly ran over an old lady with their motorcycle.

“Doctor, I think I know why she isn’t waking up,” they said, and the doctor smiled and made a sign towards a nurse. She opened a door and revealed Min’ya, leaning against the wall with a shy look on her face.

Jo jumped off their chair and hugged Min’ya tight. “I thought I had lost you.”

“I thought I had lost myself too. But I’m here. Everything is going to be okay.”


	3. Delirium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Chief of a clan needs to find a solution to save his people from the upcoming clans war, and the last resort is drinking a brew that will allow him to "travel" through time as a ghost and see what will happen in the battle and plan accordingly. However, the brew is not accurate with the timing, and he has to navigate himself, so he sees glimpses of both the past and the future.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“There is no other way,” he answered, closing his eyes and sighing deeply.

The old woman nodded and brought a little wooden bowl. The brew inside was hot and had a stinging smell, but the man just held his breath and drank it all in a single sip. He made himself comfortable in the old, plush armchair and waited.

It wasn’t long until the images flooded his vision, even if his eyes were closed. At first they made no sense - colors and shapes and tastes and sounds that he could hear with his eyes, spiraling together and apart to infinity. Everything seemed too bright and too dark in the same time, and he was spinning out of control.

After what felt like eternity, the world around him seemed to start settling down, just like the real world had been born - in the beginning, there was chaos, but then the sky separated from the earth. The colors and shapes around him did the same - they stopped their mad dance and settled down, forming images that only he could understand.

The sun was high above the ashen plains, red as blood and cold as the moon. A lonely horseman was riding towards the sea, now black with poison. The greatest cities stood in ruins, covered in dying ivy. An army, greater than anyone had ever seen before, with weapons not yet known to mankind, was marching to the north, towards the last resistance. Behind them there was fire, but no sound. They left no one alive. They were the Last Crusaders. 

He shook his head. It wasn’t what he needed to see. He moved a ghostly hand, as if searching something in the air, and pulled.

The scene changed immediately. Instead of the dying world he had seen, luxuriant forests now seemed to be everywhere. A lazy panther looked at him before stretching and laying back down on a low branch. Orchids seemed to cover every tree, their thick blossoms displaying all the colors the human eye could see. A curious monkey threw a half eaten fruit at him.

Still not the right place. He pulled the air again, a little more sure of himself, and the scenery changed again.

War.

Pull.

Loud, flying machines.

Pull.

A wooden horse entering a city.

Pull.

A woman in weird clothes having a speech.

Pull.

The day when his parents died.

Pu-

He stopped, his hand holding something. Slowly, he let go.

He knew everything that was going to happen. He relieved this day every night in his nightmares, unable to escape his father’s accusing eyes or his mother’s frightened scream as they were taken away. All he did was hide in a bush and hope to go unnoticed.

This time, barely a ghost seeing a different time, he stood right in the middle of the clearing. From a direction, he could see himself and his parents, slowly advancing through the forest, laughing, foraging. From the other side he saw four masked men, their clothes marking them as members of the tribe they were at war with. He watched as they advanced towards the him from the past. He saw his mother notice them and push him away. He saw his parents fight, he heard their shouts as they were taken down. He saw something different than his nightmares showed him - he saw the love they both had and their gratitude that they had managed to hide their son. He saw their fearlessness in the face of death. He saw…

He pulled. The scenery changed again. Through his pain, he saw himself, a nearly identical image of who he already was. He was standing on a tall tree, looking into the distance. He followed his glare, then maneuvered the vision again.

When he opened his eyes again, he knew how to save his people form extinction.


	4. Human shield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an AU with my and my gf's DnD characters

They travelled at night a lot. They were creatures of the dark, and night never scared them away. It didn’t matter if they followed a road, a path or nothing at all, because it never mattered where they were going. All that mattered was never staying in the same place for too long, never letting the man following them to catch up.

The forests were not safe for two women, not even if they were a vampire and a werewolf. Truth be told, they weren’t safe for anyone, especially not at night, but they did their best to take care of each other.

Adela’s sharp echolocation functioned when she was in her human body too, so she was aware of everything happening around them. Mahiya’s werewolf senses were also better than a normal wolf’s senses. Normally, nothing could take them by surprise at night. They were in their element, two predators hiding in their natural habitat.

But tonight was different. The moon was nearly full, and Mahiya was struggling more than usually to stay in control of her shape. Adela had finished her blood supply a few days ago, and hunger was growing inside of her like a sickness. The creature was huge, and they should have felt it coming, but it took them by surprise.

They couldn’t name it. It looked as if the gods had taken pieces of every animal ever created and smashed them together, creating an abomination that couldn’t even speak. Its scorpion-like tailed lounged for Mahiya, who avoided it at the last moment. Suddenly alert, Adela drew her sword and tried to strike an opening, but the creature was too fast.

They found the rhythm of the creature soon enough. It was too fast for them to keep up with for long, so they had to think of an alternative, and fast. They were getting tired, and it was harder and harder for Mahiya to keep her inner wolf under control. With a scream full of rage Adela managed to cut the creature’s tail, creating an opening for the creature, who put all its force in a hit directed at Adela. Without thinking, Mahiya threw herself in front of the incoming claws.

Her body cracked hard as she hit a tree that was meters away, throwing her back into her human form. A dark spot of blood started pooling on the ground, deep cuts on her stomach letting the life pour out of her.

“NO!” Adela shouted, and powered by rage, she stabbed the creature right through its heart. It let out a long howl before it burnt to ash, too fast for anything else to catch fire.

Adela rushed to Mahiya. She couldn’t help but notice the unnatural shape of her spine, the way her legs and arms seemed wrong.

“Oh, no, my little werewolf… I don’t think a healing potion will be enough to heal you,” she whispered, shock numbing her senses. Her vision went blurry with tears.

Mahiya’s chest was barely rising, going less and less up with every breath.

“I can save you, but it will take away what you are now,” Adela whispered.

The only answer she got was a faint moan, but it was enough. Gently, she bit Mahiya’s neck and nearly emptied her of blood. Then she slashed her wrist and put it next to Mahiya’s lips. The blood dripped slowly, black in the moonlight. At first nothing seemed to happen, but then with a crunch Mahiya’s limbs began to straighten themselves. It was dark magic, blood magic, the kind of magic that leaves a scar that can never go away.

Adela watched as the transformation took place, knowing that it couldn’t have happened unless the Mahiya she had known was dead. She also knew that as soon as the newborn vampire would wake up, her first instinct would be to get food. And since they had none, they would have to hunt, and then talk.

She braced herself, hoping for the best.

When Mahiya’s eyes opened again, they were no longer of the warm, luminous golden and blue she knew. They were red, a hungry red.

They ran.


	5. Gunpoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mc is an executioner faced with someone who abused them in the past.

Tock. Tock. Tock. Tock.

The sound of her heels echoed in the empty corridor.

Click-clack.

She armed the gun, one single bullet in its chamber.

Squeak.

The door needed oiling.

A man was tied down to a chair, his clothes ragged after a night in the cell, a black hood covering his head. Still his pose seemed defying, as if he was grinning at her, as if he wasn’t the one whose wrists were bound, as if he wasn’t about to die.

“Remove the hood,” she demanded, and one of the two tall men in the corners of the room pulled it off the prisoner’s head.

The man was not young nor old, and stubble was covering his square jaw. He lookes a little rough on the edges, dried blood covering half of his face. She gasped softly at the sight, then clenched her teeth.

“This is not really how I expected to see you again, baby girl,” he purred, leaning towards her in his restraints and looking up towards her face.

His piercing gaze was the same as always, sharp blue with moss edges. She growled lowly and took a big step ahead, then the bed of her gun collided with his jaw with a loud noise. He let out a surprised “uuf”, snapped his jaw back and laughed.

“Still mad at me, baby girl? Come on, I did nothing bad back then. I just left you with my friends, and they didn’t even lay a finger on you!” he laughed. “Plus, I see it did great things to your fashion sense,” he smirked, eyeing her exposed thighs and her heeled boots.

She hit him again, so hard one of his teeth came loose. “You kidnapped me because my boyfriend, a police officer, was on your tracks and close to catching you. You knocked me out and stripped me down, and god knows what else you did while I was out. When I woke up I was tied up from a hook in the ceiling, gagged, still naked, exposed in front of you and your ‘friends’,” she snapped at him before punching him once more, staining her hands of the blood that came out of his nose when she broke it. “You left me there with them for hours before you came in with my boyfriend and made him watch, bound, as you and your friends rubbed your dicks to the sight. You called the police from his phone and then left, and they found us like that. Did you know that he killed himself shortly after?”

“Poor guy. I would have found it all pretty hot if I were in his place, to be honest,” he smiled again, blood dripping out of his mouth. “Is that why you didn’t kill yourself then, baby girl? Because you wanted to find me again, get a little taste of that again?”

She spat on him. “Perverted bastard,” she threw at him. “I am only alive to finish what he had started,” she continued and took a step back. “Any last miserable words?”

“It’s a pleasure to be killed by someone with such a nice cunt as yours,” he winked.

Gunshot, then silence.

“Take the body out. I need to go home, one of you deal with the paperwork,” she threw back at the guards and slipped the gun in her corset.

She was an executioner, but even executioners need to cry sometimes, when the past ends and the future looks pointless.


	6. Isolation

The city was alive that night, cars honking and music blasting through open windows, a million lights and a thousand sounds mixing together and getting lost in the sky. Hundreds of feet above the ground, in a dark high end hotel, there was a woman, no older than 25. She leaned against the glass wall above the city, straining her ears to catch the sounds. Somehow, it was too far - she could only hear her heartbeat. The soft whoosh of her silk garments. Her slow breath. She could even hear her tears as they hit the marble floor.

She rested her forehead against the cold window, her reflexion pale as a ghost, and watched the city beneath. So full of life, of dreams. She used to be like that too, but now she was feeling so alone…

There had been a time when the money and the comfort came as a blessing. No more nights when she went to sleep hungry, no more mornings when she turned the shower water cold to lower the bills. She turned from bony to healthy, and she had colour in her cheeks, and her hair became shiny. Yet, the financial security had come with a price.

It’s not easy to be a full time sugar baby and keep in touch with friends and family.

It had been a choice, yes. A choice that had kept her alive and safe. But every deal has a price and she was paying it now - the isolation.

She hadn’t been ready for it. People warned her to not jump so far so fast, but she did it anyway. Most sugar babies never become entirely dependant on their caretakers. She had, without looking back for a moment. And now she was here, a beautiful doll stored away, to play with when the wife wasn’t around.

He was not a famous businessman. He was quite anonymous, to be fair. He was not old, barely 50, but he was mad rich. He took her in and took great care of her, but asked her to always be ready to welcome him. She rarely went outside alone, a cosmetician was hired to come in every week and help her keep herself tidy. She had access to a pool and a gym and a rooftop terrace from which she could see everything, and she could meet with other sugar babies that were living in the hotel. They had other guardians, and not all of them were women, but their stories were similar to hers.

Enslaved, but it had been their choice. To run away from a worse life.

At least they all had the internet. They had found there a replacement for the world they couldn’t see, through the eyes of games and social media and personal blogs.

It was a little funny, how they lived, locked in the last floor of a famous hotel, secret to the eyes of normal customers, always ready to please in whatever way they were needed to, always looking pretty. It didn’t matter that they barely felt pretty anymore.

What mattered for her, however, was the day when she couldn’t find the energy to get up from the bed, so she just didn’t. Nor the following day, or the day after.

Her hair lost its shine. She started losing weight. Her caretakers didn’t know what to do. One day her patron finally came in, and he stopped in the door to look at her.

She was wearing an old T-shirt and simply laid in bed. Not trying to sleep, not trying wake up. Her hair turned grayish and her eyebrows were overgrown, her body slowly covering in the hair she usually removed as soon as it appeared. He sighed deeply, understanding clear on his face.

“You won’t go on like this for longer. I think it’s time I let you go home.”

At the sound of his voice her gaze focused on him.

“H… home?” she asked shyly.

“Home, to your family. Come on, how long has it been now? 6 years? You lasted for a long time, baby girl. I never thought you’d make it this long, and I’ll reward you for it. But now it’s time for you to go back into the real world, and have a pretty sum of money on your name. Let’s take you home, shall we?” he smiled tenderly as he tucked a strand of hair behind his ear.

Maybe, just maybe, there were good people in the world, she thought to herself as she leaned into his hand.

“Yes, I’d love to go home.”


	7. Whumptober day 9: Shackled

The rusty shackles burnt her flesh, the iron bracelets blocking her Fae magic. The pain was just as constant as the hunger in her stomach and the cold in her bones. Her fingertips were already grayish, frostbite getting to her bit by bit. Without her magic, there was no flame. Without a flame, all she had to keep herself warm was a thin and battered cloth, far too little for the frozen cells.

Maybe, she thought, not having a flame was better. The ice would have melted and soaked her even faster. The cold was a terrible enemy to face, and she wondered if anyone else would have lasted this long. She blew on her fingers, but her breath was nearly just as cold as the air around.

A distant rustle made her lift her glare. Was it the time yet?

The clanking of a plate armor made her get up on her feet. Behind the ice cold metal bars there was the same guard as always, her eyes gray and blank as stone. “Come,” she would tell her every time. “The queen awaits you.”

She was taken to a throne room where the floors were covered with thick furs and the walls were lit by torches. It was the only place where she could remember what warmth felt like, evenif only for a few precious moments.

“Have you changed your mind yet, princess?” the queen asked.

The form the queen had picked that day was not that of a female, but a young and slender man, his ice blue eyes the same as every time. It was a precious gift, that of shapeshifting, and the queen was using it daily. Never had she seen the queen take the same form twice in all her days of incarceration. The eyes, however, were always the same. Ancient and cold and mischievous, a pool of darkness hiding behind the light surface.

She wondered what would have happened if she gave in. The queen had made a bargain for her body, and yet refused to take her body without her consent. She wondered if it was because seeing her break would make everything more entertaining. Whatever the answer was, she was stubborn.

“No. You cannot have my body tonight, your Majesty.”

“So proud. Even after being in my cells for three months, you still won’t give up. What is it about it that scares you?”

“Only monsters change their faces daily and live in ice mountains, and only a madman would keep prisoners in ice cells,” she answered and bowed gracefully. “Your Majesty”

The queen laughed. “You still have an edge to you, I see. Maybe I am a monster and a madman, but your life and freedom is in my hands.”

She slightly raised her glare at the sound of “freedom”. She lost ground.

“No one told you the full deal, did they?” the queen pressed.

“N-no, your majesty,” she whispered.

“And here I was, acting like a fool. They said, my dear, that if you give yourself to me every night for 3 years and 3 days, you can go home. Unless, of course, you decide to remain here,” the queen smirked.

She looked up from the ground and looked into the queen’s eyes. If she had learnt anything, it was that those blue eyes never lied. And now they were telling the truth.

“Yes, gods, yes, anything if you set me free.”

Her knees gave up and she hid her face in the furs on the floor. She was crying and shaking, relief and dread radiating from her every pore. Through a haze she hear the queen tell someone to remove her chains, but not the iron bracelets on her hands. She shivered when the weight was removed from her body, and shivered even more when a warm blanket was laid on her shoulders.

“Take her to the hot springs and send a healer. I like her fingers, I don’t want them to fall off,” the queen ordered, and then she was lifted up from the floor and carried to a new room.

As she soaked her too thin body in the warm water and looked at the ice ceiling, she thought that maybe, just maybe, the queen was not going to hurt her more if she cooperated.

After all, it was just for 1099 days. 


	8. Whumptober day 10: Unconscious

She had been reconnecting transmission wires, her nimble fingers pushing and turning little buttons inside the big machinery, when she heard the silent whistle. “Oh, fuck,” was her las thought before the reactor blew up, the gas inside catching fire at the contact with the oxygen outside. The fire burnt her right sleeve and a good part of the skin on her arm and side before the force of the blast threw her far back enough. Her head hit the concrete floor and everything went dark.

Once upon a time, there had been no gods. The world had been balanced in its chaos, as there cannot be imbalance when there is no order. There was no up and down, no left nor right, no Good or Bad, and therefore there was no middle.

Then, from the primordial substance, the volatile ether raised up and the heavy mush settled down. Water sprouted out from beneath the earth, and fire lit up the sky, and so the elements were layered: fire, air, earth, water. Now where there had been Chaos there was Order, but in Order things cannot evolve, so the gods were born.

At first it was a spirit of the forest, their bark body too covered in mushrooms for anyone to be able to tell if it was the body of a man or of a woman. They often felt alone, so soon enough a breeze took the form of a small winged woman and sat on his shoulders, rustling the leaves on their head every time she laughed. Her laugh awakened a third spirit, a river who rose from his bed and left behind nothing of himself but moss covered stones, and joined the two spirits in their companionship.

For a while, they lived together, but the water spirit often felt alone and restless, and it wasn’t rarely that he left the other two to their jokes and left, searching for something he couldn’t name. One day he found it - at the edge of a volcano, in a place where he should have never gone if he wanted to stay alive, a flaming silhouette was wiggling its feet above the molten rock. The spirit, as much of a woman as the forest spirit was a man, turned their head curiously and then tilted it at the sight of a body of water so close to their heat.

They went back together, hand in hand. Steam rose from their bodies every time they touched, his cold body getting hotter and their fire shape getting smaller. At times they had to be apart to not consume each other, but they always met again, eager to get more of each other.

The four of them lived happily together, but they were growing bored. One day they decided to build two dolls and give them bits of themselves, so they did. The forest spirit built them from clay from under his forest, and the air spirit gave them hair from feathers of the birds that lived high up in the cliffs. The water spirit put little tubes with water inside of their arms and legs, and the fire spirit placed a little ember in their chests.

Still it wasn’t enough. They sat down and thought about what was missing, and the answer couldn’t come from any of them, because they had only known the Order that came after the Chaos. They decided to sleep, hoping that the rest will help them find an answer.

At night, when they were no longer aware of themselves, the little particle of chaos that had managed to survive the segregation came out, as it always did, looking for a place to plant itself. It saw the two dolls and it strained and strained and strained until it managed to split in two, then went right into the mouths of the two dolls. With a flinch and a gulp, both of the dolls sat up and coughed, but the particle had nested itself inside their heads and now just waited to grow.

In the morning, the spirits were amazed by their creation, and the dolls were confused. Without a moment to spare, the spirits started teaching the dolls everything they knew. Having a bit of them all, the dolls could understand everything easily, and it wasn’t much until they started being seen as equals by the spirits

One day, the female doll realized her stomach had been bloating more and more over the days, and she wondered if it was from something she had eaten. She went to the forest spirit for guidance, and with amazement he told her it wasn’t from food - but inside of here there was a life growing.

She gave birth to a child, and then another, and then more children as the years passed. Her clay body was strong, but with every child she seemed to shrink, and so did the male doll. When they finally turned to dust, they left behind them a last child.

When the child opened its eyes, Min’ya’s own eyes opened to a bright light.

“Doctor? The patient is finally awake,” a stranger’s voice said as Min’ya tried to remember where she was. 


	9. Whumptober day 12: "Don't move!"

The weather had been harsh when they started crossing the lake, days ago. The ice was a meter thick near the pontoon they had left from, and the north wind was freezing everything in its path. They could have gotten to the other side in peace, if the weather had acted normally.

The gods, however, had other plans. For some reason, they didn’t seem to want the expedition to succeed. Although the first few days of the expedition had been discouraging, too cold and too windy to make advancing easy, the next days had been easy. Too easy. The sun was shining brightly and the sky had cleared of clouds. By the second day of sun, the ice had become slippery.

It was then when they realized that the good weather was not a blessing, but a curse. The ice was melting.

They tried to pick up their pace, but they had too many things to carry and it made them tired too fast. They tried to travel more at night when the ice was colder, but they soon realized that it only caused the ice to melt faster if they were sleeping on it during the day.

They stopped fishing, afraid to break the ice. They started walking farther apart from each other and tied each other with rope, doing their best to put as little pressure on the ice as they could. Their ice skates slipped more and more on the molten ice, making it hard for them to balance.

One day, the unavoidable happened. One of the two travelers did a mistake and fell on the thinning ice. A loud snap followed by a heart topping crack filled the air. To the horror of the travelers, their rope had just broken, as if severed by an invisible hand, and the ice was breaking, smaller cracks parting from the main one.

The traveller tried to get up, causing the ice to crack again.

“Don’t move!” the other traveller said. “Let me think of something.”

He spent a long time thinking, every ice crack telling him just how little time there was left. When the ice looked like a spider web more than a whole piece he made his decision. He skated away, put down all his bags, took a wide turn until he reached the other side of his companion and sprinted. His speed was not natural as he skated. The ice was cracking like thunder and lightning at his passing, but he was too fast. He crashed into his companion at full speed and lifted them up on his shoulder, then kept sprinting away until they reached his bags. Behind them there was now a pool of water, most of the ice having sunk.

“Thank you.”

“That’s what brothers are for.”

They could have sworn that as they left, an annoyed sigh filled the air.

The gods were restless. But there was still time to stop the heroes from reaching their goal.


End file.
